The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

Einstein: His Life and Universe

Why we think it’s a great listen: You thought he was a stodgy scientist with funny hair, but Isaacson and Hermann reveal an eloquent, intense, and selfless human being who not only shaped science with his theories, but politics and world events in the 20th century as well. Based on the newly released personal letters of Albert Einstein, Walter Isaacson explores how an imaginative, impertinent patent clerk became the mind reader of the creator of the cosmos.

The Professor and the Madman

Part history, part true-crime, and entirely entertaining, listen to the story of how the behemoth Oxford English Dictionary was made. You'll hang on every word as you discover that the dictionary's greatest contributor was also an insane murderer working from the confines of an asylum.

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

1776

Why we think it’s a great listen: If you ever thought history was boring, David McCullough’s performance of his fascinating book will change your mind. In this stirring audiobook, McCullough tells the intensely human story of those who marched with General George Washington in the year of the Declaration of Independence, when the whole American cause was riding on their success.

Why is glass see-through? What makes elastic stretchy? Why does a paper clip bend? These are the sorts of questions that Mark Miodownik is constantly asking himself. A globally renowned materials scientist, Miodownik has spent his life exploring objects as ordinary as an envelope and as unexpected as concrete cloth, uncovering the fascinating secrets that hold together our physical world.

For Whom the Bell Tolls

In 1937, Ernest Hemingway traveled to Spain to cover the civil war there for the North American Newspaper Alliance. Three years later he completed the greatest novel to emerge from "the good fight", For Whom the Bell Tolls.

A History of the World in 6 Glasses

Throughout human history, certain drinks have done much more than just quench thirst. As Tom Standage relates with authority and charm, six of them have had a surprisingly pervasive influence on the course of history, becoming the defining drink during a pivotal historical period. A History of the World in 6 Glasses tells the story of humanity from the Stone Age to the 21st century through the lens of beer, wine, spirits, coffee, tea, and cola.

John Quincy Adams

He fought for Washington, served with Lincoln, witnessed Bunker Hill, and sounded the clarion against slavery on the eve of the Civil War. He negotiated an end to the War of 1812, engineered the annexation of Florida, and won the Supreme Court decision that freed the African captives of La Amistad. He served his nation as minister to six countries, secretary of state, senator, congressman, and president. John Quincy Adams was all of these things and more. In this masterful biography, award-winning author Harlow Giles Unger reveals Adams as a towering figure in the nation’s formative years.

Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything

Which is more dangerous, a gun or a swimming pool? What do schoolteachers and sumo wrestlers have in common? Why do drug dealers still live with their moms? How much do parents really matter? What kind of impact did Roe v. Wade have on violent crime?

Empire of the Summer Moon

Few people realize that the Comanche Indians were the greatest warring tribe in American history. Their 40-year battle with settlers held up the development of the new nation. Empire of the Summer Moon tells of the rise and fall of this fierce, powerful, and proud tribe, and begins in 1836 with the kidnapping of a lovely nine-year-old girl with cornflower blue eyes named Cynthia Ann Parker.

Caesar: Life of a Colossus

Tracing the extraordinary trajectory of Julius Caesar's life, Adrian Goldsworthy covers not only the great Roman emperor's accomplishments as charismatic orator, conquering general, and powerful dictator but also lesser-known chapters. Ultimately, Goldsworthy realizes the full complexity of Caesar's character and shows why his political and military leadership continues to resonate some 2,000 years later.

Practicing Mindfulness: An Introduction to Meditation

Meditation offers deep and lasting benefits for mental functioning and emotional health, as well as for physical health and well-being. These 24 detailed lectures teach you the principles and techniques of sitting meditation, the related practice of walking meditation, and the highly beneficial use of meditative awareness in many important activities, including eating and driving. You will also learn how to use the skills of meditation in working with thoughts and emotional states.

Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs

People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

Nelson Mandela is one of the great moral and political leaders of our time: an international hero whose lifelong dedication to the fight against racial oppression in South Africa won him the Nobel Peace Prize and the presidency of his country. Since his triumphant release in 1990 from more than a quarter-century of imprisonment, Mandela has been at the center of the most compelling and inspiring political drama in the world.

Calculating God

In this Hugo-nominated novel, an alien walks into a museum and asks if he can see a paleontologist. But the arachnid ET hasn't come aboard a rowboat with the Pope and Stephen Hawking (although His Holiness does request an audience later). Landing at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, the spacefarer, Hollus, asks to compare notes on mass extinctions with resident dino-scientist Thomas Jericho.

Contact

The future is here...in an adventure of cosmic dimension. In December, 1999, a multinational team journeys out to the stars, to the most awesome encounter in human history. Who - or what - is out there? In Cosmos, Carl Sagan explained the universe. In Contact, he predicts its future - and our own.

My Early Life

One of the classic volumes of autobiography, My Early Life is a lively and colourful account of a young man's quest for action, adventure and danger. Churchill's schooldays are undistinguished, but he is admitted to Sandhurst and embarks on a career as a soldier and a war correspondent, seeing action in Cuba, in India, in the Sudan - where he took part in the battle of Omdurman, of which he gives us a stirring account - and finally in South Africa.

Made to Stick

Mark Twain once observed, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on." His observation rings true: urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus public-health scares circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas (business people, teachers, politicians, journalists, and others) struggle to make their ideas "stick". In this indispensable guide, we discover that sticky messages of all kinds draw their power from the same six traits.

Middlemarch

Dorothea Brooke is an ardent idealist who represses her vivacity and intelligence for the cold, theological pedant Casaubon. One man understands her true nature: the artist Will Ladislaw. But how can love triumph against her sense of duty and Casaubon’s mean spirit? Meanwhile, in the little world of Middlemarch, the broader world is mirrored: the world of politics, social change, and reforms, as well as betrayal, greed, blackmail, ambition, and disappointment.

Miracles and Massacres: True and Untold Stories of the Making of America

History is about so much more than memorizing facts. It is, as more than half of the word suggests, about the story. And, told in the right way, it is the greatest one ever written: Good and evil, triumph and tragedy, despicable acts of barbarism and courageous acts of heroism.The things you've never learned about our past will shock you. For example, the reason why gun control is so important to government elites can be found in a story about Athens. Not the city in ancient Greece, but the one in 1946 Tennessee.

I, Robot

They mustn't harm a human being, they must obey human orders, and they must protect their own existence...but only so long as that doesn't violate rules one and two. With these Three Laws of Robotics, humanity embarked on a bold new era of evolution that would open up enormous possibilities, and unforeseen risks.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine

Who understood the risk inherent in the assumption of ever-rising real-estate prices, a risk compounded daily by the creation of those arcane, artificial securities loosely based on piles of doubtful mortgages? Michael Lewis turns the inquiry on its head to create a fresh, character-driven narrative brimming with indignation and dark humor, a fitting sequel to his number-one best-selling Liar’s Poker.

The Inexplicable Universe: Unsolved Mysteries

Everything we now know about the universe - from the behavior of quarks to the birth of galaxies - has come from people who've been willing to ponder the unanswerable. And with the advent of modern science, great minds have turned to testing and experimentation rather than mere thought as a way of grappling with some of the universe's most vexing dilemmas. So what is our latest picture of some of the most inexplicable features of the universe? What still remains to be uncovered and explored by today's scientists?

Publisher's Summary

The Clockwork Universe is the story of a band of men who lived in a world of dirt and disease but pictured a universe that ran like a perfect machine. A meld of history and science, this book is a group portrait of some of the greatest minds who ever lived as they wrestled with natures most sweeping mysteries. The answers they uncovered still hold the key to how we understand the world.

At the end of the 17th century, an age of religious wars, plague, and the Great Fire of London when most people saw the world as falling apart, these earliest scientists saw a world of perfect order. They declared that, chaotic as it looked, the universe was in fact as intricate and perfectly regulated as a clock. This was the tail end of Shakespeare's century, when the natural and the supernatural still twined around each other. Disease was a punishment ordained by God, astronomy had not yet broken free from astrology, and the sky was filled with omens. It was a time when little was known and everything was new. These brilliant, ambitious, curious men believed in angels, alchemy, and the devil, and they also believed that the universe followed precise, mathematical laws, a contradiction that tormented them and changed the course of history. The Clockwork Universe is the fascinating and compelling story of the bewildered geniuses of the Royal Society, the men who made the modern world.

I hesitated to buy this one after reading the reviews, so I felt obliged to offer a counter opinion. I thought the book excellent and the narration quite tolerable. While the author centers on the great calculus debate between Newton and Leibniz and tosses in a lot of anecdotal history, the book also functions as a very good primer on the foundations of modern science, treating it as the elaboration and application of mathematics to physical phenomena. The crucial step represented by a mathematics of motion is a central theme. His descriptions of the calculus and the weird conceptual innovation Newton called ???gravity??? are really very good and surprisingly clear in narration without any visual aids. He also paints a vivid picture of the physical and metaphysical worlds of the 17th century, including a welcome insistence on the essential role of religious faith, even mysticism, in the thinking of the early modern scientists. As to the narration, I can see why some people might find it slightly irritating. The reader has a plumy voice that dips into avuncular chuckles at points of irony, which can be a bit annoying. But I found the pace and tone very good for comprehension overall. The lives of Newton and Leibniz make a marvelous story, and unless you are already familiar with them you will probably enjoy this book.

Featuring Kepler, Galileo, Newton, and Leibniz, the author explores the scientific golden age of the seventeenth century. The characters are lively, the science is fascinating, and the subjects diverse: geometry, calculus, physics, optics, and more. An absorbing read for anyone interested in the hard sciences and curious about their development.

I found this book to be quite entertaining. I find the people behind the science and the politics to be very interesting. Sklar's narration fit the tone of the book and kept me engaged through some of the more soap opera parts whilst also making the science aspects interesting. A very good read to see a bit behind the major breakthroughs of the science we take for granted today.

This book is a great introduction to so many of history's most interesting genius's. The major characters are Newton and Leibniz but the author manages to familiarize the reader with a near exhaustive list of scientific greats from throughout history. Don't worry about hearing too much about stuffy intellectual types, these guys are far from boring. I didn't agree with all of the authors perspectives on these great men and the times in which they lived but all and all this is a solid and very informative book about a fascinating and turbulent time in history. The author covers a vast amount of material yet manages not to short change the subject. A light and fun history that manages to convey a large amount of information and leave the reader wanting more. Leaves much of the life, blood, controversies, feuds, and other interesting bits in. Makes you want to read biographies of just about everyone mentioned. The narrator is fantastic.

This book is full of fascinating history and science. It reads more as a story rather than an historical reference, though. But having a hard copy version would be useful to refer back to for the sheer density of information. The author presents the material in a logical, well-organized manner with an entertaining style. The narrator, however, tended toward monotony now and again. Still, his diction was clear and the recording lacked any true quirky irritations.

Don't expect a history of Isaac Newton or the Royal Society. While you may find a lot of history, what you will hear is how people thought and understood the world in Newton and other great British and European thinkers' time. It helps you to understand the change in understanding our world. I think Edward Dolnick did a pretty good job in giving his listeners an understanding of the world from which the modern world sprang. Alan Skar also does a fair job of interepretative reading. I didn't find any reading down. I do think however Dolnick wrote as if he has futher evolved in his thinking than some other people, which could give certain people offence. All in all a good book but not really my cup of tea... or coffee.

This title is extremely entertaining. It covers and links historical figures and their achievements well but above all it’s delivered in an entertaining and often amusing way. Highly recommended to anyone even remotely interested in historical events and discoveries.

The review would not be complete however without mentioning the quality of narration. Alan Sklar has become an instant favourite with me and I’ll be searching out other titles he’s worked on based on this book alone.

I'm afraid the narrator, whose voice is really fantastic, reads 'down' to the listener. I loved Dolnick's text, but Sklar made me feel as if I were sitting on the floor in a circle of third-graders. His tone diminishes the material. If you have the option, buy the hard copy.

I enjoyed this book because I like the topic. It traces the evolution of cosmology from ancient greek times to modern times. Much of the book covers the three most famous scientist of their times. Galileo, Kepler and Newton. It does a great job explaining how the world evolved from a theory of the earth at the center of the universe to the universe as we now know it. The earth centric view was destroyed as soon as Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter. The Earth could no longer be the center of the universe since those moons orbited Jupiter. The book also covers how Newton proved that the planets travel in an elliptical orbit about the sun.

This book is probably not for everyone, but if you like the subject of the history of science it is worth the listen.

I am interested in this period in history and this book provided lots of interesting details. However, at times it seemed to jump about a bit and I was not so comfortable with this lack of a strong flowing narrative

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